Is migration good for democracy?

Some observations from Mali, made in its 50th year of independence

By Charlotte Wiedemann

Is migration good, just because the European Union is fighting it so hard? This is a political and a moral question. More often than not, it will be answered in moral terms; in particular by those, whose response to fortress Europe is a different understanding of the globe, a conception of universal freedom of travel and of open borders. Indeed, the benefits of migration seem obvious. Foreign workers send home large amounts of money; they combat poverty by their own effort. But the implications for those migrants’ home-countries are rarely addressed. How are they affected? What are the consequences for their domestic politics, when millions of their citizens are, as it were, posted abroad as cash machines?

The Myth of Invasion

The inconvenient realities of African migration to Europe

Hein de Haas (2008)

Dominant discourses obscure that African migration to Europe and Libya is fuelled by a structural demand for cheap migrant labour in informal sectors. This explains why restrictive immigration policies have invariably failed to stop migration and have had various perverse effects. Also African development is unlikely to curb migration as it will enable and inspire more people to migrate. Despite lip service being paid to “combating illegal migration” for political and diplomatic reasons, neither European nor African states have much genuine interest in stopping migration.